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Arctic refuge saved from oil drillers – Inuit divided

Published on December 22, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, Arctic / Northern Regions, ecology nature, inuit

Good news (for environmentalists) before the Christmas New Year-break: There will be no oil drilling in the Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife reserve. Republicans have battled to allow drilling in the reserve for 25 years. Although they pledged to try again next year, the defeat was expected to remove the issue from the agenda for a decade, according to The Age.

The region is home to hundreds of polar bears, and tens of thousands of caribou and other animals. Interesting how the concept of beauty differs. Alaska’s 82-year-old senator Ted Stevens is quoted. The wildlife refuge was a “barren, frozen wasteland”, with “constant tundra, no trees, no beauty at all”.

>> read the whole story

Concerning oil drilling, the Inuit are divided as ethnic US Americans: Oil of course means money, therefore Nunatsiaq wrote some years ago: Alaskan Inuit support oil drilling in the ANWR.

In an Guardian article we meet Bruce Inglangasak, an Inupiat Inuit. He describes one of the consequences of the oil drilling in another Alaskan region – it’s smog:

“When the wind blows from the west, a yellow-brown smog goes right across the horizon. In the summer, when I go fishing, it burns my eyes. It’s not just the air. Every time it rains our fish get it and our whales get it. You can feel the difference when you hold the fish now. The flesh is not as firm as it once was.”

The article goes on, telling that the oilfields have not turned out to be the ecological showpieces the Inupiat were promised:

More oil was found than expected and the drilling rigs, roads and pipelines now dominate the landscape. There is an average of more than one toxic spill a day; 43,000 tonnes of nitrogen oxides are released into the air each year, more than in Washington DC.

Nevertheless, he is not against the drilling:

For all his unease about the contamination of his ancestral lands, Mr Inglangasak needs a job. He has an eight-year-old daughter, and hunting and fishing are not enough to keep her clothed, housed and educated.

Seems to be more a problem of capitalism!

>> read the whole Guardian-story: Oil clouds gather over Alaskan eden

The Arctic is changing. An environment at risk. By Mark Nuttall (TheArctic.is)

Zebedee Nungak: Arctic Christmas – The then and now (very nostalgic column in the Windspeaker about the commercialisation of Christmas)

Good news (for environmentalists) before the Christmas New Year-break: There will be no oil drilling in the Alaska's Arctic national wildlife reserve. Republicans have battled to allow drilling in the reserve for 25 years. Although they pledged to try again…

Anthropology News December: Comparative studies of flood management in neoliberal, social-democratic states needed

Published on December 7, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, ecology nature, journal articles / papers, politics

One month before Katrina resulted in floods in New Orleans, a similar “natural” disaster occurred in Mumbai, India. Judy Whitehead, associate professor at the University of Lethbridge in Canada ~~the United Kingdom~~, has conducted disaster research in partnership with an NGO that brought together organizations working with slum dwellers. In Anthropology News December, she sums up some similarities between the disaster in Mumbai with the Katrina disaster in Florida.

Both disasters reveal “common problems in both neoliberal states’ disaster management”:

States that minimize public safety, leaving “civil society” and the market to meet social needs, may well be ones that are deficient in safety planning and provisioning.

Similarities:

– Like New Orleans, Mumbai has de-industrialized in the past two decades. The city’s textile industry has closed down under competition from the power loom sector.

– Like New Orleans, Mumbai, too, has a vulnerable topography.

– Like New Orleans, the vacuum created by state inaction was filled by the press who excelled in Mumbai in “speaking truth to power.”

Her conclusion:

Since economic reforms were installed in India in 1991, “good governance” has come to mean that state and municipal governments should be pared down, while social services are contracted out to non-governmental organizations. The notion of a state that relies on “civil society” to meet its social programs ignores long-term investment in infrastructure to prevent disasters and long-range planning that focuses on preparedness for the worst-case scenarios.

Comparative studies of flood management in neoliberal, social-democratic states provide important insights in resulting problems in disaster management.

>> read the whole article

When applied anthropology becomes aid – A disaster anthropologist’s thoughts

New website: Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social Sciences

Thesis: Conservation for Whom? Telling Good Lies in the Development of Central Kalahari

Published on November 20, 2005 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, development empowerment, ecology nature, journal articles / papers, San-bushmen, tourism

Anna Stadler from Linköping University, Department of Anthropology (Sweden) has conducted a study of the relocation of the G//ana and G/wi San from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana. Her essay discusses how conservation policies, development programs and eco-tourism projects have been implemented in the Central Kalahari, and the consequences these policies have had for the people who first inhabited of the area. Excerpts from the conclusion:

The Botswana government has encouraged the local inhabitants of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve to resettle, as the San has been accused of poaching, and it is claimed that the tourists who come to Central Kalahari wish to see unspoiled wilderness. (…) As the San are being removed from the reserve, and more tourists are brought in, the area’s attraction as a reserve seems to have only to do with its value as a resource for tourism.

(…)

Prejudice, discrimination and racism still stand in the way for development in Botswana. In the space of a few years, Botswana has been transformed into one of Africa’s richest countries, with an economic growth that has prompted a massive social change. In wealthy Botswana, hunting and gathering are clear indicators of poverty. The solution to this poverty is believed to be assimilation into the dominant Botswana society.

Having the apartheid regime of neighbouring South Africa in thought, at independence the Botswana regime decided to ignore any cultural differences among its people. Black or white, cattle-owner or huntergatherer, everybody was to be treated as if they were the same. Consequently, poverty, not discrimination, was seen to be the main problem of the San. The relocation-program has thus a lot to do with the governments attempt to assimilate a people they regard as being “backward”.

>> read the whole thesis

When applied anthropology becomes aid – A disaster anthropologist’s thoughts

Published on November 6, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, development empowerment, ecology nature

In Anthropology News November, Susanna M Hoffman (co-editor of Catastrophe and Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster) rises the question how anthropologists could help people who are ravaged by the recent hurricanes:

Disasters and their effects on culture and society have been largely disregarded by anthropologists. (…) In the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, another aspect of anthropology, also often ignored, rises to the forefront, or should rise. That is, what we can do to help people who are ravaged.

This is the area of our study usually called applied anthropology, but in such cases as Katrina and Rita, becomes, in fact, aid. We are the sort who participate directly with people in such a way that we might learn what survivors actually want and work to provide it. I not only suggest that we incorporate the effects of disaster into our studies, but I also implore that if anyone should converge after such a calamity, it should be us.

>> read the whole article

MORE DISASTER ANTHROPOLOGY IN ANTHROPOLOGY NEWS NOVEMBER:

SherriLynn Colby-Bottel: Doing Anthropology in New Orleans, Before and After Katrina

Dick Gould: Identifying Victims after a Disaster

Gary M Feinman and Christopher T Fisher: The Dangers of Ignoring the Evidence. Hurricanes, Hazards and Survival

New website: Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social Sciences

The Anthropology of Disaster – Anthropologists on Katrina

Disasters and their effects on culture and…

Fieldwork in Papua New Guinea: Who are the exotic others?

Published on November 6, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, ecology nature, fieldwork / methods, indigenous people / minorities, Pacific Oceania

A recent post by Alex Golub on Savage Minds is interesting for several reasons: Even a scientific project on a very narrow topic might suddenly be relevant for a wider audience. Golub has studied the relationship between indigenous people in Papua New Guinea and the white senior management of a gold mine. He writes:

I’ve been really amazed to see the New York Times’s series on the impact of gold mining that has been running recently—suddenly my area of expertise is literally news.

Furthermore, Golub reminds us that – when doing fieldwork, it’s not always clear who “the exotic other” actually is. In Golub’s case it’s not the indigenous people, but the white mining employees, although, as he writes “mine management were supposedly ‘from my culture.’”:

Learning to like and respect these men (they were almost entirely men) was one of the hardest parts of my fieldwork. They were mostly Australian and Canadian, and had the usual Commonwealth suspicion of Yankees. I was an artist and an intellectual, and over-educated to boot. And they were MEN in a way that I was not—they talked about rugby and worked with their hands and had pictures of naked (or nearly naked) women on their walls, in there calendars, on their screen savers. And, of course, in the struggle between landowners and company, I was sympathetic to my indigenous hosts.

Golub also draws our attention to the consequences of our consumption of metals:

It is commonplace these days for people who drive cars to lament the way they are destroying the environment. Very few people realize what the set of silverware in their kitchen cupboard makes then an accessory to. (…) Look up from your computer screen for a moment and look around the room—how much metal do you see? Imagine the copper wires and metal pipes and lines of nails that stretch around you for thousands of miles. Where did they come from?

>> read the whole post on Savage Minds